All posts tagged Inmarsat

European equity markets are mostly higher Monday as investor sentiment has improved a little. This is partly down to Greece, where opinion polls suggest that the pro-bailout New Democracy party has taken the lead over Syriza ahead of elections, which is a welcome boost for investors.

However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is still a long way to go and several analysts warn that the future of the euro is still in question.

The Spanish banking sector is in focus today. Shares in Bankia fell by nearly 30% Monday morning as investors mulled the €19 billion government bailout announced late on Friday. Spain’s third largest bank by assets has effectively been nationalized–analysts expect the Spanish government will eventually control between 80% and 90% of the bank.

As a result, UBS downgraded Bankia to “sell”. UBS has also looked beyond Bankia at the broader sector implications. It highlighted several headwinds including the risk for the Spanish stock market and the prospect for further M&A in the sector.

And from Spain we go to Italy, which has also come under immense scrutiny during the euro-zone’s sovereign debt crisis.

Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo has been cut to “sell” from “hold” by Societe Generale.

So, it appears investors are closing the chapter on the Greek debt crisis as euro-group ministers “politically” agree on Greece’s second bailout. The mood is upbeat and stock markets across the globe are breathing a huge sigh of relief as a result.

With the Greece crisis on the back burner, investors chew on some of day’s equity-rating changes made by the investment-banking community. Here are our top picks for Tuesday:

It looks like Exane BNP Paribas are now more upbeat on the Italian banking sector. The French investment bank has upgraded the ratings of two Italian financial institutions, UniCredit (UCG.MI) now at outperform from neutral and Banca Popolare dell’ Emilia Romagna (BPE.MI) now rate at neutral from underperform. “The Italian economy has entered a path of structural change and funding normalization, hence we are less concerned about the risk of incremental deterioration of UniCredit’s Italian loan book,” Exane said.

Exane added that due to a shareholder base largely made up of retail investors Banca Popolare dell’ Emilia Romagna is one of the few Italian banks which did not benefit from the rally in bank share prices since the beginning of the year. “With the flow back from the completion of the buy-back of network banks’ minorities over we upgrade Banca Popolare dell’ Emilia Romagna to neutral on valuation grounds,” said Exane.

Web surfers frustrated with sluggish broadband services might have to consider joining the army, or at least signing up for a long sea voyage.

U.K. communications company Inmarsat has been out shopping for new satellites, and says its s global mobile broadband service, due in 2014 after the firm contracted Boeing to build it three next- generation Ka-band satellites, will offer speeds up to 50 megabytes a second to an antenna about the size of a domestic TV satellite dish, putting most land-based services to shame.